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Newsletter No. 3. 2014
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January 20, 2014
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New
Articles Posted
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Andrew
DeWit
Spinning the Tokyo Metro
Election
The
election campaign for the Tokyo metropolitan government (TMG) begins officially
on January 23, with voting scheduled for February 9. It appears that
former Prime Ministers Hosokawa Morihiro and Koizumi Junichiro have seized the
TMG election as an opportunity, among other things, to advance an antinuclear
program and to test the Abe regime. There is an enormous amount of spin
on related issues in the Japanese press and social media, as well as in the
lamentably meagre coverage offered by English-language media and bloggers.This
article considers what some of the spin reveals about the stakes in the present
election, its consequences for Japan's trajectory and the world.
Andrew DeWit is Professor in the School of Policy
Studies at Rikkyo University and an Asia-Pacific Journal coordinator. With Iida
Tetsunari and Kaneko Masaru, he is coauthor of "Fukushima and the Political
Economy of Power Policy in Japan," in Jeff Kingston (ed.) Natural Disaster and
Nuclear Crisis in Japan.
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Mark Selden
Bombs Bursting in Air: State and citizen
responses to the US firebombing and Atomic bombing of Japan
Japan's
decision to surrender at the end of WWII- pivoting on issues of firebombing and
atomic bombing, Soviet entry into the war, and the origins of Soviet-American
confrontation-is perhaps the most fiercely debated subject in twentieth century
American global history. This article focuses on the human and social
consequences of the bombings, and their legacy in the history of warfare and
historical memory in the long twentieth century. The first section provides an
overview of the calculus that culminated in the final year of the war in a US
strategy centered on the bombing of civilians, and assesses its impact in
shaping the global order. The second section examines the bombing in Japanese
and American historical memory, including history, literature, commemoration and
education.
What
explains the power of the designation of the postwar as the atomic era while the
area bombing of civilians by fire and napalm, which would so profoundly shape
the future of warfare in general, American wars in particular, faded to virtual
invisibility in Japanese, American and global consciousness? This paper assesses
the impact of the firebombing and atomic bombing of Japanese cities in the
history of war and the history of disaster.
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C. Douglas Lummis
The Great
Betrayal
December 27, 2013 will be remembered as a black day in Okinawan history. On
that day, Okinawa Governor Nakaima Hirokazu cast aside his campaign promises,
his statements made repeatedly during the last three years, and his duty as
Governor to represent the will of the Okinawan people. Nakaima approved the
Japanese government's application for permission to begin reclaiming land
offshore from Henoko in northern Okinawa, on which to build a new US Marine
Corps base. This amounts to approval of the base, which he had promised to
oppose.
So what happens
next?
The next crucial event is the election for
Mayor of Nago City (where Henoko is located), which was held on January 19. The
issue in this election is clearly defined: the incumbent Mayor Inamine Susumu,
is adamantly against the new base project; the challenger, Suematsu Bunshin, is
enthusiastically for it. Inamine has said that if re-elected, he will use his
authority as mayor positively to block the project. The Tokyo Government has
announced plans to spend fabulous sums to defeat him. Money will also be poured
in by the companies expecting to get construction contracts, and pressure will
be put on their employees. The outcome of the base debate depends on whether the
next election can be bought. [Editor's note: On January 19 Mayor Inamine won a
stunning victory at the polls re-opening the question of the
base.]
C. Douglas Lummis, a former Marine stationed on Okinawa, is the author
of
Radical Democracy and other books in Japanese and English. He is
an Asia-Pacific Journal Associate and formerly taught at Tsuda College.
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Brian Daizen Victoria
A Zen Nazi in Wartime Japan: Count
Dürckheim and his Sources-D.T. Suzuki, Yasutani Haku'un and Eugen
Herrigel
Throughout the 1930s, Japan's relationship with Germany was in
flux according to the changing political interests of both
countries. This article completes a three-part series on the relationship
of D.T. Suzuki and other Zen figures in wartime Japan to Count Karlfried
Dürckheim and other Nazis. Neither
Dürckheim nor Suzuki ever expressed regret, nor accepted personal
responsibility, for their moral blindness in having promoted the unconditional
acceptance of death on behalf of two aggressive states. This article reveals how each man contributed to the
greatest war and accompanying loss of life in world history.
Brian Daizen Victoria is a
Visiting Research Fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese
Studies, Kyoto. He holds an M.A. in Buddhist Studies from Sōtō Zen
sect-affiliated Komazawa University in Tokyo, and a Ph.D. from the Department of
Religious Studies at Temple University.
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David McNeill,
Al-Jazeera
America on the Fukushima Triple Disaster, Three Years
On
As the third anniversary of the
Fukushima nuclear disaster approaches, a string of new projects analyzing its
causes and impact are underway. Al-Jazeera America is among the first out of the
blocks with a four-part documentary, broadcast on its "America Tonight" segment
in early January 2014. Among the questions it explores in the video below: Does
the lingering aftermath of the crisis pose any danger to people living on the
West Coast of North America? The documentary concludes that it does not. "The
radiation will slowly sink, before harmlessly decaying over decades as Pacific
currents turn most of the groundwater toward Southeast Asia and the Indian
Ocean," says Professor Aoyama Michio, a scientist at the Meteorological
Institute of Japan. But, he adds, operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) must
remove all the Strontium-90 from contaminated water or it will cause a "big
problem" for the whole Pacific. Compiled during two weeks of November 2013, the
documentary's most damning report profiles the so-called nuclear gypsies, the
largely unskilled, non-unionized and transient workforce that TEPCO has
employed, through a network of subcontractors, to clean up from the disaster.
Read More . .
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